Muslimah Creativity, Piety, and Solidarity in Mohja Kahf’s Hagar Poems
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15642/NOBEL.2024.15.1.105-118Keywords:
orientalism, gender and Muslimah feminists, Muslim women leadership, Muslimah leaders and mothers, US-Muslim women's poetryAbstract
This paper investigates how Kahf’s poetry collection, Hagar Poems (2016), discovers Muslim women or Muslimah leadership by exploring Muslimah leaders, such as Hagar (Hajar), Khadija, and Aisha to undermine reductionist views of Muslim women both in Orientalism and Anglo-American feminism. In doing so, Kahf uses the strategies of juxtaposition, humor, and irreverence by connecting Muslimah ancient leaders to her contemporary speakers who are crisscrossing Islamic traditions and American popular culture. By engaging with postcolonial and gender studies with the frameworks of leadership and Islamic studies, this paper investigates how Kahf’s women juxtapose ancient folkloric tales and American popular cultures, both to establish their multiple identities and leadership and to illuminate contemporary resonances of ancient Muslimah leaders in the eyes of subsequent generations. Indeed, the patterns of Muslimah leadership in Kahf’s poems are represented as engaging with the ideas of creativity, piety, and solidarity; and these patterns work to question the exclusion of Muslimah leadership in both gender and orientalist debates. Thus, Kahf’s Hagar Poems explores the representation of Muslim women from Islamic history who serve as role models, having displayed heroic characteristics through their leadership.
Downloads
References
Abdelrazek, A. T. (2007). Contemporary Arab American women writers: Hyphenated identities and border crossings. Cambria Press.
Abdul-Jabbar, isam K. (2014). The question of foreignness in Mohja Kahf’s e-mails from Scheherazad. Arab Studies Quarterly, 36(3), 242–259. https://doi.org/10.13169/arabstudquar.36.3.0242
Abdulhadi, R., Alsultany, E., & Naber, N. (2011). Arab and Arab American feminisms: Gender, violence, and belonging. Syracuse University Press.
Abuelezam, N. N., & Fontenot, H. B. (2017). Depression among Arab American and Arab immigrant women in the United States. Nursing for Women’s Health, 21(5), 395–399. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nwh.2017.08.003
Alsultany, E. (2012). Arabs and Muslims in the media: Race and representation after 9/11. NYU Press.
Arab American Institute. (2021). About Arab Americans. Aaiusa.Org. https://www.aaiusa.org/demographics
Friedman, S. S. (2020). Conjunctures of the “new” World Literature and Migration Studies: Cosmopolitanism, Religion, and Diasporic Sisters of Scheherazade. Journal of World Literature, 3(3), 267–289. https://doi.org/10.1163/24056480-00303004
Goleman, D. (2018). What makes a leader? Routledge.
Kahf, M. (2003). E-mails from Scheherazade. University Press of Florida.
Kahf, M. (2016). Hagar poems. University of Arkansas Press.
LaRose, C. N. (2014). Counter fictions and imaginary topographies: Auto/biographical methodologies and the construction of group knowledge in Evelyn Shakir’s Bint Arab: Arab and Arab American women in the United States. HAWWA, 12(2–3), 237–267. https://doi.org/10.1163/15692086-12341265
Mattawa, K. (2008). Writing Islam in contemporary American poetry: On Mohja Kahf, Daniel Moore, and Agha Shahid Ali. PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 123(5), 1590–1595. https://doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2008.123.5.1590
Reimer, V., & Sahagian, S. (Eds.). (2013). Mother of invention: Howour mothers influenced us as feminist academics and activists. Demeter Press.
Shomali, M. B. (2018). Scheherazade and the limits of inclusive politics in Arab American literature. MELUS, 43(1), 65–90. https://doi.org/10.1093/melus/mlx089
Solnit, R. (2017). The mother of all questions: Further feminisms. Granta Publications.
Suliza, H. R., Raihanah, M. M., & Noraini, M. Y. (2013). Scheherazad’s daughters: Views from a Muslim diasporic woman writer. Asian Journal of Women’s Studies, 19(3), 97–115. https://doi.org/10.1080/12259276.2013.11666158
Walker, R. E. (1995). To be real: Telling the truth and changing the face of feminism. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 NOBEL: Journal of Literature and Language Teaching
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
